Richard Nixon: The Eternal Ratfker

Forty-six years ago this week, elements of the American armed forces entered the village of My Lai 4 in Vietnam and systematically slaughtered 504 civilians in a deliberate war crime. The only reason the death toll wasn't higher was because some American heroes, including Hugh Thompson and Larry Colborn, placed themselves between another group of civilians and the marauding Americans.

Now, we discover, thanks to the 60 Minutes group, that, once again proving to be history's yard waste, Richard Nixon decided to ratfk Thompson and Colborn for his own cheap political purposes, and he set his button man, H.R. Haldeman to do it.

The documents, mostly hand-written notes from Nixon's meetings with his chief of staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, lead some historians to conclude that President Richard Nixon was behind the attempt to sabotage the My Lai court-martial trials and cover up what was becoming a public-relations disaster for his administration. One document, scribbled by Haldeman during his Dec. 1, 1969, meeting with Nixon, reads like a threatening to-do list under the headline "Task force - My Lai." Haldeman wrote "dirty tricks" (with the clarification that those tricks be "not too high a level") and "discredit one witness," in order to "keep working on the problem."

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Good god, what a wretched, twisted little man he was.

James Rife, a senior historian at History Associates Inc., helped author Trent Angers find the Haldeman meeting notes, which are described in detail in "The Forgotten Hero of My Lai." "I would not characterize [the "dirty tricks" note] as a smoking gun, but it's pretty strong," Rife says. "I don't think we'll ever find an actual document that can make the absolute final link between Nixon and Hugh Thompson." According to historian Ken Hughes, it's the historical context that makes for a convincing argument. He calls My Lai "a political threat to Nixon," and points out that a substantial part of Nixon's support base refused to believe that killing civilians in a war zone was a crime. According to Hughes, Nixon's approval rating dropped by 10 points after Lieutenant William Calley received a life sentence for murdering civilians at My Lai. Nixon intervened, and Lt. Calley's sentence was reduced. He was paroled after only three years under house arrest.

A crook is so much the least of the darkness that Richard Nixon really was.